Horizon3 & Deloitte forge cyber resilience alliance

Horizon3 has formed an alliance with Deloitte in Australia focused on cyber resilience for organisations across Australia and New Zealand.

The partnership combines Horizon3's NodeZero security platform with Deloitte's cyber advisory, transformation, resilience and managed services. Together, they will work with enterprises seeking more frequent testing of cyber defences and clearer evidence of which weaknesses attackers can exploit.

Boards, regulators, customers and insurers are putting more pressure on companies to show they can withstand cyber incidents. At the same time, many organisations still rely on periodic assessments and fragmented security tools, leaving gaps between tests.

Horizon3 and Deloitte said their approach is designed to help clients move beyond theoretical risk scoring and broad lists of findings. Instead, it focuses on identifying exploitable attack paths, ranking the most significant exposures and checking whether remediation has reduced risk.

NodeZero is designed to validate attack paths across internal systems, internet-facing assets, cloud environments, identities, web applications and hybrid estates. Deloitte will add strategic and operational support to help clients interpret findings and act on them across security and IT teams.

Shift in testing

The alliance reflects a broader shift in cyber security from point-in-time reviews to continuous validation. Companies face growing scrutiny not just to report risks, but to show that controls work in practice.

The need has become more urgent as security teams contend with faster-moving threats, vulnerabilities linked to artificial intelligence tools and increasingly automated attack methods. The companies said their work together is intended to help executive teams understand cyber exposure in business terms rather than through technical scores alone.

For Deloitte, the arrangement adds an attacker-perspective testing platform to its cyber consulting and managed services work in Australia. For Horizon3, it opens access to a large advisory and delivery network in a market where companies are seeking more measurable ways to assess resilience.

Gareth Cox, Vice President, Sales, APJ, Horizon3, said the alliance responds to demand for clearer evidence of risk.

"Organisations across Australia and New Zealand do not need more cyber noise. They need proof," said Gareth Cox, Vice President, Sales, APJ, Horizon3. "By combining Deloitte's strategic advisory and delivery strength with Horizon3's ability to safely discover exposure, prioritise based on impact and remediate with clarity, we can help executive leaders make faster, better-informed security decisions, reduce risk and demonstrate measurable resilience over time."

Client focus

The two companies will target organisations seeking stronger assurance over the effectiveness of cyber controls across broad, complex technology estates. That includes businesses running a mix of on-premise systems, cloud services and externally exposed applications.

The alliance is also intended to help security and IT teams improve prioritisation. Rather than treating all findings as equal, the goal is to highlight the exposures that create material business risk and verify that fixes have worked.

Liz Douglass, Partner and Cyber Lead, Deloitte Australia, said the need for continuous evidence is growing as the threat environment changes.

"In an increasingly dynamic threat environment, organisations need more than periodic assurance exercises. They need continuous, evidence-based insight into where they are exposed and how to strengthen resilience. Our partnership with Horizon3 expands our ability to help clients translate attacker-perspective validation into practical action across strategy, operations and transformation," said Liz Douglass, Partner and Cyber Lead, Deloitte Australia.

Horizon3 said more than 7,000 organisations use its technology, including defence agencies, large enterprises, banks and healthcare providers. The company positions NodeZero as a platform that can test defences, uncover exploitable paths and verify fixes in an ongoing cycle.

Cox said the relationship pairs Horizon3's exposure validation with Deloitte's ability to help clients turn that evidence into action.

"Horizon3 provides evidence of real exposure through attacker-perspective validation, and Deloitte helps clients translate that evidence into action, operating change, and sustained cyber resilience," said Cox. "That is what makes this alliance meaningful for executive leaders."